ANN ARBOR – It's easy to accept that Michigan football coach Brady Hoke was looking somewhere else during Saturday's game against Minnesota when his quarterback took a helmet to his chin, like a jaw taking an uppercut from a fist.

It's not so easy to accept what he did about it.

Or what he says about the incident still.

From the moment the game ended at Michigan Stadium, Hoke and the university have said little that sounded competent. It's no surprise then that Shane Morris' woozy stumble has become the talk of college football, and the latest public-relations disaster for a school that refers to itself as the "leaders and the best."

From Hoke's use of the word "tough" to describe his quarterback after the game — as if old-fashioned football character were enough to stave off a concussion — to the promise of medical information that wasn't delivered Monday, to the refusal of athletic director Dave Brandon to show up to answer questions, the school has failed.

Then failed again when it made the strange and desperate decision to finally release the promised medical explanation … at 1 a.m. Tuesday, some 12 hours after Hoke said it would be available.

This wasn't Hoke's fault, of course. The info should have been ready before the coach ever took the podium Monday afternoon at the Crisler Center for his weekly news conference. Instead, he had to fend for himself.

Blame Brandon, and his corporate impulse to spin. Had he revealed the truth more effortlessly — and quickly — his coach would not have told a packed room of reporters that Morris didn't have a concussion.

When, in fact, he did.

Brandon said in his 1 a.m. statement that Hoke didn't have this information when he went to his news conference. But, according to Brandon, team doctors on Sunday had evaluated Morris and determined he had a mild concussion. The symptoms were not there Saturday evening during the initial evaluation.

Brandon said the system failed.

He did, too, and then made the situation worse by sending his highest-profile coach to meet the press without the truth. That's unconscionable, but hardly surprising.

Brandon's need to control information is relentless, a contradictory directive at an institution whose primary purpose is to share ideas.

He admitted as much in his statement, not so much his draconian philosophy, but his culpability in what happened at the stadium Saturday.

"Ultimate responsibility for the health and safety of our student-athletes resides with each team's coach and with me, as the director of athletics," he wrote.

Brandon promised to change the system and place a dedicated medical professional in the press box to look for signs of head trauma. That person will have access to television replay and a radio to talk to medical personnel on the sideline.

This is a start. But it doesn't do much to undo this past weekend. Nor does it explain why one of the best research universities in the world — which in May became a leader in a $30-million joint concussion study by the Department of Defense and the NCAA — didn't already have a system in place. That falls on Brandon and Hoke.

Without that system, it's not a shock that Hoke didn't think a concussion was even a possibility for Morris. Nor is it hard to believe that his assistants, who were communicating with Morris from the sideline, figured the quarterback had stumbled because he had reinjured an ankle. For the record, Hoke thought the same thing, too.

There is simply no justification for not pulling Morris off the field after he nearly fell into his teammate's arms. We know too much about concussions. We've seen too many lives ruined because of them.

Hoke knows all this, and emphatically defended his record on the subject during his news conference.

"We would never, ever put a guy on the field when there was a possibility with head trauma," Hoke said.

We have no reason to doubt Hoke on this point. It would take a sociopath to knowingly keep a player in the game under those circumstances.

The problem is, Morris was already on the field. He eventually trotted off after the next play but returned a few plays later when his replacement, Devin Gardner, had his helmet pop off.

Morris re-entering the game for Gardner may have been worse. Hoke told us he was arguing with the officials trying to call a time-out so that Gardner wouldn't have to leave the game when Morris jogged back on the field.

If so, then why didn't any other coach stop Morris? Because they hadn't seen the initial hit, apparently, and the staff that had couldn't communicate that with the coaches in time. This was another failure in the system.

So was the stunning admission that Morris didn't get a concussion test during the game at any point. He wasn't looked at until after the game had ended.

It's true that no head coach can be expected to witness every detail of a football game. Even the most organized head coaches rely heavily on a bevy of assistants and support staff to manage a team.

Still, a coach — and his athletic director — has to have a system designed to see every detail. Hoke's system failed Morris on Saturday. Brandon's lack of oversight failed Hoke.

Neither man has done — or said — a thing the last three days to help the situation, the university or themselves.

Hoke could have avoided this by taking a different tactic after the game, during his postgame presser, by admitting Morris should have come off the field immediately. He also might have told everyone he was demanding a hard look at the system that let Morris down.

He could have said this again Monday.

Instead, he repeated several times football coaches coach and do not make decisions about potential injuries, a helpful arrangement for the health of players — it diffuses conflict of interest.

Yet this is Hoke's program. He is the face of it, even if Brandon is the CEO. Both men designed a system that couldn't react quickly enough, full of assistants and trainers and staff members who didn't see — or communicate if they did — what thousands saw in the fourth quarter at Michigan Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

It's a mistake to suggest this unfolded because of indifference or an out-of-proportion desire to win. Hoke's integrity and character shouldn't be questioned.